


but never doubt I love

by cedarmoons



Series: i'll bring you home [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Character Study, Dragon Age: Inquisition - Jaws of Hakkon DLC, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:13:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27499984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cedarmoons/pseuds/cedarmoons
Summary: “Doubt truth to be a liar; but never doubt I love.” Winter is her hardest season.
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas
Series: i'll bring you home [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1242347
Comments: 9
Kudos: 67





	but never doubt I love

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by replaying jaws of hakkon at nightmare difficulty and getting my ass kicked at level 32. embarrassing

Winter is her hardest season. This has always been true.

The Emprise had been her first winter as Inquisitor, and her first true failure against Corypheus. They receive reports of innocents being used as human red lyrium mines, and she is already ordering Cullen to deploy troops, Leliana to alert her Inner Circle of their trip.

Blackwall, Solas, and Bull are the ones to accompany her, initially. The rest will come later, as they scout the Emprise and learn that Corypheus has gathered the last remnants of his power here. (Or so they think—unaware, as yet, of the forces marching toward the Arbor Wilds.)

“It will be a difficult journey,” says Leliana. The fresh mountain snows crunch under their boots as they make their way to the stables. Ariala cups her gloved hands over her face, blows warm air to heat her nose and cheeks. She’d stolen one of Solas’s scarves, green with bronze stripes, and the edges of it flutter in the wind.

Skyhold is brutal in wintertime, even with its protective magics.

“It’ll be fine,” Ariala says, as cheerful as can be. “Can’t be any worse than the Mire!”

She laughs, but Leliana does not. She follows Ariala down the stairs, snow melting in her hood, informing her of reports that the Emprise was riddled with infected templars, who had fortified their position in an old Dalish fort. 

“I’ve killed lots of templars,” says Ariala. “I think we’ll be fine.”

At the stable, Solas is brushing down Eirlana, his mare. Bull is there too, and Blackwall. 

The Emprise will be Blackwall’s last mission with the Inquisition. They will return to Skyhold, and Ariala will not know about Thom Rainier for another two weeks. She will learn, though, and she will choose to let his execution proceed without interruption, a criminal brought to justice. She will regret, deeply, and the unfinished griffin rocker will haunt her every day after. But for now, he is alive, and he waves when he sees her.

Ariala waves back, then flicks her stolen scarf at Leliana. “Cheer _up_ , Leli. What’s the worst that can happen?”

Leliana rolls her eyes, and Ariala winks before walking away. Her three companions turn to greet her, but it is Solas she turns her attention to first. “Hey, sleepyhead. Think fast!”

She tosses the amulet, and he catches it in one hand. He opens his palm and looks at it. “A necklace of cold resistance?” he asks, arching an eyebrow toward her.

She shrugs. “Hear it’s cold out there.”

“Boss never makes _us_ presents,” Bull grumbles. Blackwall shakes his head.

“I _just_ made you a brand new greataxe,” she reminds him. “It’s dawnstone!”

“Yeah, and it’s kick- _ass_ ,” Bull laughs. Blackwall helps her onto her gelding, Syl, and after a few more minutes of good-natured ribbing, they are off.

— ✦ —

She’s read reports about lyrium being able to sing, somehow. Solas has told her that where regular lyrium might be a single, pleasant note, red lyrium was a cacophony. She believes him, of course, but she’s never heard what the mages claimed to hear. Not until the Emprise, at least.

Sahrnia is a miserable, ugly village. She explores as much as she can, speaking to villagers who look cold and hungry and ill-fitted for the winter. When that is done, and she has told Scout Harding to send for warmer clothes and blankets and food, she finds a collapsed wall at the edge of the village. Growing out of the stone is a massive cluster of spiked lyrium, their ends sharpening to fine knife-points. The snow near the lyrium has melted into mud and slush.

And the red lyrium… _hums_. It’s a strange sound, almost winter-like, clear and sharp. There’s no melody, just sound. Orange-gold light snaps and crackles from the cracks in the scarlet crystal. It’s strange, and a little fascinating. She’s afraid of it. The spikes in front of her had looked like the spikes that had grown out of the Grand Enchanter in Redcliffe, pinned her helpless and dying to the wall. The heat radiates on her face, chasing away the cold.

A gentle touch to her arm draws her out of her fascination. She looks and sees Solas, bundled up so well that the only thing exposed to the cold is his eyes. Just like her. He pulls away, half-turning, and she follows him away from the spikes.

The silence in the absence of the lyrium’s hum is… strange. Disconcerting.

“Is that what you hear all the time?” she asks.

“Yes.”

It’s started to snow again. Ariala reaches out to dust some flakes off of his scarf. The air is too cold for them to even melt. “I’m sorry.”

His brow knits. “Why?”

She shrugs. “It seems like a lot.”

His eyes soften. “Ah.” 

He says nothing else, and they move on. Ariala can see a rift over the frozen lake through a broken window, so that is where they go next. By the time they reach the lake, there are already despair demons floating around the rift, hunched in on themselves and trembling.

Despair demons are the hardest, she thinks. Worse even than pride demons. Pride demons just laughed at you and flung lightning around. Despair demons snuck up behind you and draped themselves over your shoulders, whispering your deepest regrets into your ear, and you were frozen in place as they sucked the energy out of you.

Ariala is reaching for an arrow when she feels an icy touch on her shoulder, and her body goes cold all over. She stiffens, breath exhaling in one puff of mist, gaze locked on the ice under her feet.

_Who gave you the right to choose who lived and who died? A little Dalish girl who can’t even read, and you are sacrificing heroes at your whim. You only chose Hawke because of Varric. Alistair was a Grey Warden. He would know them better than Hawke ever could._

_You made the wrong choice. Thousands will die for it. They will all blame you for your failure._

_You will be alone and hated, abandoned by all you love—_

Something screeches just beside her ear, and the ice releases her. Ariala gasps and pulls away, losing her balance and falling on the ice. Her heart is _racing_ , and she flings her hand up toward the rift, turning her face away as the Fade sputters and contracts. The rift closes with a sickening sucking sound, and she is left alone, her tears freezing on her face. Her whole body is an ache of cold and fatigue, and she can’t feel her toes even through her boots and three layers of socks.

“Vhenan,” Solas calls, and Ariala sniffles, wiping her nose. 

“Sorry,” she whispers.

“Tel’abelas,” he replies, offering her his hand. She takes it, lets him pull her to her feet. She rests her forehead against his chest, just a brief moment of respite, allowing him to shield her from the winter cold. Solas’s hand cups the back of her head, and she feels the briefest feather-light pressure on the top of her skull.

She pulls away, and he lets her go. On instinct, she reaches for his hand. She can’t feel him through their thick gloves, but he squeezes her hand nonetheless, turning away toward Blackwall and Bull, who are both cleaning demon goop off their swords. 

After a moment, Bull gives them a look-over, then says, “Hey, boss. Look up. Ladies with titsicles.”

Ariala looks up and sees, indeed, a nude female figure holding up the ruins of a Tevinter bridge, with massive icicles hanging from her tits. She starts laughing, and the remnant chill of Despair slides away from her, water sluicing off of her back. She puts away thoughts of Alistair falling to the Nightmare’s pincers and fangs—replacing them with jokes about titsicles and Blackwall teasing Solas about his relationships with spirits.

The joking quickly ends when they stumble upon a red templar camp. They had been too loud, had unknowingly alerted the templars to their presence, given them time to prepare. Ariala had focused on getting to high ground, picking off the soldiers fighting Bull and Blackwall. One of the templar assassins, turned into a grotesque monster with sharpened spears of red lyrium for arms, sets off a smoke bomb and disappears.

Out of the corner of her eye, a plant rustles beside Solas. “ _Solas!_ ” she screams. Her body moves on instinct, drawing an arrow and loosing in the direction of the shadow. A cry of pain, and the templar assassin stumbles out of the smoke, directly behind Solas. Solas Fade steps away, and Ariala watches from her hill as he slams his staff into the ground.

There isn’t even a trail of ice over the lake. The templar is warm and breathing one moment, and then the air bursts around him, crystallizing into ice and freezing him solid. A single puff of air leaves his mouth, and then he is a statue.

Blackwall strikes, driving his sword straight through the templar’s frozen chest. Ariala watches the ice crack and shatter, chunks of what had once been a man thudding to the ground, still frozen.

She has seen much, but she has never seen anyone die like that. 

She covers her mouth, turning away, swallowing hard as the bile rises in her throat. 

The lyrium sings to her. Solas steers her away.

— ✦ —

They run into the Jaws of Hakkon on their way to meet a forward camp, before they even know about their existence. A half-naked woman painted in white-and-black stripes slices through Dorian’s shoulder with a blue-lit blade. Dorian cannot even react before he is frozen solid.

Ariala cannot move. She is in the Emprise again, templars and Inquisition soldiers shattering to pieces before her eyes. Dorian does not know why she cries when the magic fades and the ice melts, releasing him, but Bull gives her a knowing look. Ariala wipes at her eyes, furious at herself for her irrational tears, and does not return Bull’s look.

She tries not to think of frozen men-turned-statues as she loots the Hakkonites’ dead bodies.

— ✦ —

Later, in the privacy of their tent at the Sahrnia camp, Ariala will say, “I thought only mages heard lyriumsong?”

Solas is under his bedroll with the blanket pulled up to the bridge of his nose. His voice is a little muffled under all the furs. “I am not certain. Perhaps—hm.”

“Perhaps what?”

Solas squints in thought but doesn’t answer, settling deeper into the furs. The tent flaps rustle, snow settling over the entrance ground in a fine layer of white. The scouts had predicted a blizzard in the next few days, which would cover up any tracks the templars had left behind. The wind’s howl is already audible outside. 

She’s put on a fresh batch of three sock layers, but her feet are still cold. She wiggles her toes to make sure she still can, then looks over at Solas. “Okay, move over, sleepyhead.” 

She burrows under the furs with him and presses her freezing feet against his shin. Solas yelps and scrunches his nose at her, and she laughs, pressing a kiss to his shoulder. “ _Mwah._ ”

He sighs but moves to accommodate her, pulling an extra blanket over them both. Ariala wraps her arms around him, smiling when his ears turn pink. She buries her face into his shirt, nose against his spine, and says, “I hate how cold it is. I miss home.”

Solas takes her hand, tucks his thumb into her palm. “Are you referring to Antiva?” he asks.

“Yeah. Way warmer up there.”

“I can imagine.” She hears the smile in his voice. He turns, and they move as one—Solas lifting his arm, and her ducking underneath it to rest her head on his chest. His fingers flick, and the air around them warms. Ariala shivers then looks at him.

“You couldn’t have done that earlier, huh?”

Solas laughs. She can only pretend to glare at him so long, before she is laughing, too, hiding her amusement in the soft cotton of his shirt. 

They laugh more together. They are more comfortable by each other’s side. She looks at him and she is warm enough to not need the blankets. He looks at her and grants a smile only she is privy to—small and warm and crinkling the corners of his eyes.

In the quiet afterward, Solas reaches for the cold resistance amulet around his neck. She stops him, shaking her head. “Vhenan,” he says. “You need it more.”

“It was a gift,” she tells him. “I’ll be _very_ offended if you return it. _I’m_ not the one going barefoot in the snow.”

He looks like he’s ready to argue, but after a moment he settles back with a sigh. She moves with him, resting her chin in the cupped palm of her hand.

“Clan’s moved to the Free Marches recently,” she says. “Last heard they’re holed up near Wycome on the coast. After all this Corypheus bullshit you should come home with me to meet them. You’d love my grandmother. Maybe. I think you would.”

Solas looks away as he pulls her close, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. He says nothing, but she hears his acceptance nonetheless. He hasn’t let go of her hand, and he is warm, and she is happy.

— ✦ —

She doesn’t know why, but the rifts in the Basin are the hardest she’s ever dealt with. Harder even than in the Hinterlands, when she had no idea what she was doing. They find one near a ruin of a massive Tevinter aqueduct, and Ariala can’t even open it until after they clear out the varghests, which are also larger and more aggressive than any of their brethren that the Inquisition has encountered before.

Dorian dispels a demon as it is materializing, and instead of three, they have to fight two terrors. The second wave is even worse—a pride demon and a despair demon, which promptly flies away to hide, leaving the pride demon to fend for itself.

As Ariala kneels to line up a full draw, a wintry breath shivers up her back. She shudders, her exhale escaping as a cold mist. She thinks of Crestwood, Solas backing away from her. _I am sorry. I never meant to hurt you._

But he did, didn’t he? She was left behind, left shattered and heartbroken. She still is. He doesn’t care, though. He never cared. He only cared for the Anchor, and the orb, and when that was gone, there was nothing keeping him here, least of all her. Why would he want someone as broken as her—someone who was responsible for the deaths of all her people?

She thinks of the waterfall, and stagnant green water, and a tombstone that read _Dying Alone_ beside one that said _Abandonment_. What a pair, and he knew, and he left anyway, and I am alone, and

Words written on blood-spotted paper: _You are the last of Clan Lavellan_

 _What we had was real you are perfect exactly as you are you carry the last you are the last I am the last_ _I AM ALONE AND IT IS ALL MY FAULT I FAILED I KILLED THEM HE LEFT ME I WASN’T GOOD ENOUGH I WILL NEVER BE GOOD ENOUGH I AM ABANDONED I DESERVED IT I AM ALONE I AM ALONE I AM ALONE_

Something _shrieks_ in her ear, and Ariala lurches away, grabbing for her bow on instinct. She turns, heart hammering in her chest, only to see Bull slam a despair demon into the ground. With a roar, he buries his axe in its chest. Smoke fills the air and fire _crackles_ as it catches on the demon’s rags. Ariala reaches out toward the rift, clenching her fist and pulling the energy toward her. The rift contracts, then closes with a sucking sound. She wants to scream. She wants to _scream_.

Instead, she is sobbing—silently, now, a skill she has perfected over time. They are left bloody and breathless in the aftermath. Ariala curls up, tucking her legs under her body and wrapping her arms around herself. The demon must have sucked out whatever energy she’d had, because she is tired and hungry and cold. She wants to sleep for a thousand years and never wake up.

Leather boots with upturned toes step in her vision. Bull. She swallows, looking down, trying to hide her face as she wipes at her cheeks. Bull groans as he settles down, and she winces as his knee pops and cracks beneath the brace. 

“Bull, don’t,” she starts, but he’s already on the grass.

“Think we should take a break,” he says.

“Yes, all right,” Dorian says. “Cole, I see some elfroot over there—come with me, will you?”

“But you don’t _like_ foraging,” Cole replies, giving Ariala a knowing look. He goes anyway, after Dorian has grabbed his arm and pulled him away, heading back down the cliffside path they’d climbed up.

Bull doesn’t say anything until they’re gone, then he says, “You gonna look at me, Boss?”

“I _hate_ despair demons, Bull,” she says, voice breaking. She swallows. “It feels like they’re just ripping open old wounds again and I can’t ever _heal_.”

“I know,” he says, and he sounds as exhausted as she feels. He pulls her against his side, and she cries into his harness until the exhaustion swallows her grief, leaving her hollow and empty and tired. When she is ready, they help each other stand, and Dorian finally returns from his foraging detour with Cole. 

Cole’s the only one holding any elfroot.

— ✦ —

The blizzard sweeps into the Emprise with a vengeance. Ariala had ordered most of the company to stay in their tents, and Solas had cast a charm to keep the tents reasonably warm. Warm enough to require two layers instead of four, at least.

She misses Antiva desperately. The clan had lost elders to cold before, but their winters had never been like this.

A noise outside, distinct from the blizzard’s howling, catches her attention. Someone calling _Inquisitor!_ , desperate. Solas opens his eyes, pulled from his meditating. “Stay here,” Ariala tells him, stealing his scarf to wrap over hers. Three layers of scarves, and all she can feel is her own breath against her lips, damp and slightly warm.

She slips outside, immediately holding up her hand to shield herself from the wind. She sees the commotion at once: a helmeted scout, staggering through knee-deep snow. Harding is already outside, the only one beside Ariala.

“We’ve b-been waiting for a gr-group from th-the forward camp,” says the scout, shuddering. “Th-they haven’t c-come back.”

“No one’s supposed to be scouting in the blizzard!” Harding shouts, straining to be heard over the wind.

“Th-they thought they’d g-get back in time!” replies the scout. A few other scouts have emerged, as has Blackwall. Ariala waves them all back to their tents. “P-Please, Inq-Inquis- _Inquisitor_ , we have t-to find them before it’s t-t-too—”

Ariala nods. “Go rest in my tent, soldier,” she says, but the scout shakes their head.

“M-My partner, they were in the gr-group. I w-want to find th-them wi-with you.”

Ariala looks to Harding, who nods. It’s too dangerous for horses, with the snow being knee-deep and worse. They go on foot instead. It’s just Ariala, Harding, the forward scout, a handful of Harding’s best men. Blackwall had also offered but Ariala had told him to stay behind, knowing he’d sink in the snow like water with all that armor. The snow goes up to Harding’s waist but she doesn’t even seem to notice. Ariala will be impressed later, when she is focusing on not falling into a snowdrift or losing her fingers.

The scout leads them into one of the gorges that lead to Sahrnia’s sprawling quarries. It protects them from the winds, but not the snow or the cold. The blizzard had covered any tracks from the forward scouts, and is quickly swallowing theirs as well. With the wind’s shrieking a little quieted, the winter stillness does not quite sit right with Ariala.

But it is not until they enter a quarry, where the white snow is tainted with scarlet lyrium and broken-open iron cages, that Ariala realizes the trap they’ve walked into. She looks up at the scaffolding that surrounds the quarry, and sees a templar assassin detonate a smoke bomb. Out of the corner of her eye, several templars emerge from a tunnel leading deeper into the quarry, their silver armor crusted with snow and red glowing under their helmets.

It’s as if they don’t even feel the cold.

“Templars!” she shouts, drawing her bow. Her limbs are stiff and frozen, too slow, and the helmeted scout deflects her arrow with a barrier. _Venatori. Fuck, FUCK!_ She looks to her people, snaps at them to run.

One does. The Venatori waves his hand, and the scout is frozen solid, the air bursting around him and crystallizing. Ariala watches as the templar assassin emerges from the shadows, driving its sharpened ruin of an arm through the scout’s chest. The scout shatters, and Ariala can’t stop her scream.

Adrenaline warms her. She shoots a templar through the throat, unhooks a jar of bees to distract the assassin. Harding and the last scout—still here. Why are they still here? Ariala shoots another templar in the eye, and out of the corner of her eye, something massive and red emerging from the tunnel.

A behemoth.

Her head whips toward her people. _“RUN, HARDING!”_

She does. The second scout is cut down covering her, but when Harding is gone, the templars focus on Ariala. They’d wanted her all along. She’s so _fucking_ stupid.

But she won’t make it easy for them. 

She dodges the assassin’s thrust, pulls a dagger from her belt and drives it into his eye. The behemoth’s swing catches her after that, and she goes sprawling in the snow. She hardly feels the pain and scrambles onto her back as the behemoth staggers toward her, roaring, flanked by templars. One swings his sword, and she flings her bow up on instinct. It catches the blade, but the wood cracks and splinters down the middle.

Ariala throws her entire body weight to the side, twisting her bow as hard as she can. The suddenness of it wrenches the sword out of the templar’s grasp, sending it and her broken bow flying. She doesn’t give them time to recover or react, acting on pure instinct alone. 

There is blood in her mouth as she lifts her hand, and it grounds her. The pain makes her more aware of the Veil, the thinness of it, the song of the lyrium growing out of quarry stone. She finds a loose, frayed edge, and _pulls._

The Anchor flares, a blinding burst of green.

The rift opens in the center of the behemoth’s chest. The behemoth is ripped apart by the force of it, red lyrium shattering and raining down around them, and another is sucked into the rift. Ariala laughs at them—three left of a group of six—as the Venatori casts a spell over her and she falls into darkness.

She doesn’t know it at the time, but as she is taken, Solas’s scarf falls loose from her face. It will be left there in the snow, among the blood and broken bow and scattered arrows. 

Solas will be afraid as he has not been for three thousand years.

— ✦ —

It’s autumn in the Frostback Basin, blooming with the colors of sunset and decay, but the wind may as well carry snow and ice on its back. This autumn will be her second as Inquisitor. If she survives it, of course. Because—

The Hakkonite bruiser finally, _finally_ falls, and the enchantment on his sword that had somehow turned her to ice (frozen solid, vision black, unable to move or see or hear anything but the silence of cold) ends. The ice shatters around her, and she staggers.

Her head is bleeding, and her ears are still ringing from the swing of the Hakkonite’s massive warhammer. Icemelt runs in freezing rivulets down her skin, seeping under her armor. Nausea sits low and heavy in her stomach, drying out her throat. She is cold. She was frozen. Just for a moment, just before the Hakkonite lifted his warhammer. He would’ve turned her into shattered ice and blood-pulp, just like the templars in the Emprise—

“Boss,” she hears, as her knees give out from under her. Someone catches her before she hits the ground.

Her head _aches_. It’s cold, as cold as it’d been in the Emprise. She can’t feel her fingers, and she’s underneath Suledin Keep, screaming as red templars pushed her toward a growth of red lyrium, laughing, snow still on her cheeks—

“Boss. Breathe.”

She tries, and it helps, just a little. One breath, another, don’t focus on the cold. Focus on Bull, instead. Bull is talking, and so is Dorian, but Dorian’s voice is more muffled. She tries to tell them she can’t hear them, that she can only feel the blood running down her temple, soaking her scarf. Her Dalish scarf, gray and woolen. She’d gotten it from Wycome, from her clanmate. Vunora? No, Davhalla. Right?

Her head…

The world spins as she is lifted, and she twists, vomiting—only bile. Nothing to eat today. She’d forgotten.

Her fingertips are still cold as Bull carries her away from the riverbank to the nearest camp.

— ✦ —

She comes to not so long after, as the last templar is lifting her over his shoulder like a sack of produce. His pauldrons dig into her stomach through her torn leather armor. Her wounds have been superficially healed, she thinks—the pain isn’t so great, and her skin is numb. Admittedly, though, that could just be the cold. Snow sticks to her eyelashes and cheeks and wets her hair. The snow rapidly fills the footprints leading out of the quarry.

She doesn’t think the Inquisition would have a hard time deducing her location—it’s common knowledge their bastion is the old elven fortress, Suledin Keep. But maybe this trail will be a back end, a way to get in without fighting the bulk of forces. They’d just have to find evidence of it first. 

Ariala twists her wrists behind her, and the templar’s hand on her thigh tightens to the point of pain. “Don’t try anything,” he growls at her, and his voice echoes. She thinks of Solas and Cassandra, surrounded by red haze and crackling static, their voices double-toned. _I am dying, but no matter._

She swallows, frightened as she hadn’t been by the fight.

“Samson wants her,” a Venatori calls over the howling wind, just barely audible despite how close they are. “As does the Elder One. You will not kill her, dog.”

The templar growls, and Ariala stops moving altogether at that. Samson and Corypheus? They weren’t—they weren’t _here_ , in the Emprise, were they? Cullen had asked Leliana’s people to look into it. If they were, she was much worse off than she thought.

Fuck. _Fuck_.

She starts biting her cheek, ignoring the tears of pain that prick her eyes. Her skin breaks under her teeth, mouth filling with blood. She spits her blood out onto the snow, as quietly as she can, and watches red spots bloom in the snow. Her spit freezes on her lips; the wind numbs her body.

 _Find me,_ she thinks, as if he’ll be able to hear her from the other side of the quarry. _Find me._

She has no idea how long it takes for the Venatori to bring her to Suledin keep; she measures distance by footsteps, and the occasional mouthful of blood in the snow. She has to keep re-chewing her cheek to break the healing skin, and her tears are frozen under her eyes. It hurts. It hurts, but if it helps them, it’ll be worth it.

— ✦ —

The Frostback Basin is full of enormous trees, vines thrice the size of Bull that crawl over caverns and down cliffsides. When they’d first arrived, Ariala had asked Dorian why the plants were so big, but he had only looked at her, confused. “Do I look like a botanist?”

“You’re a researcher, though.”

“Of the _arcane!_ Not plants!”

It is to one of those enormous trees that Bull carries her. On the circular wooden ramp up the tree trunk that Dorian had complained made his thighs hurt, someone is screaming for a healer. Ariala is cold, and the side of her head is wet, and Bull’s voice is unintelligible but low and soothing. Black spots swim through her vision.

Then, suddenly, there are hands on her, carrying her somewhere dry and not-cold. She’s laid down on a bed, or a cot. Someone is wrapping her head, Dorian is yelling. Chaos. She blinks, tries to focus on the medic bent over her. An elf, a man, blonde and fair-skinned. Not Dalish, but one of her People. He needed help at the river.

“Lethallin?” What’s his name? She knows his name. The sunlight hurts her eyes. Her head hurts, too much pressure behind her forehead. 

“It’ll be alright, Inquisitor,” he says. His hands pull away from her head—bloody. Her blood? Her head…

Behind him, she hears Bull say, “Caught her in the head while she was frozen—”

“It hurts,” she tells him. Where was Solas? He was the healer. She always brought him. He should be here. Isn’t he? Someone rushes in with bandages and supplies in their arms, but Lethallin takes her attention again, sitting in front of her.

“I know, Inquisitor. But don’t you fret, we’ll get that fractured skull patched up soon enough.”

More spots in her vision. The world goes fuzzy again.

— ✦ —

The blizzard is over by the time they arrive at Suledin Keep. Even so, Ariala is half-frozen. She is dumped in the snow in an overgrown courtyard choked with winter-dead leaves, and she doesn’t even have the energy to pick herself up. She only shakes, watching her breath escape in puffs of mist.

The templars gather around to jeer. One kicks her in the ribs, and she bites her tongue to keep herself from making a sound. She lifts her head up from the snow, her bun unraveling, her hair falling around her face. A templar grabs her hair and lifts her from the snow.

“This is the bitch that’s been giving everyone so much trouble,” he says. He’s wearing full templar plate, his helmet visor pushed up to reveal his eyes. His breath is hot and stale on her face. The heat of him burns the air, and gives a little crackle. The warmth lets her focus, lets her look up at the little lines of scarlet in his eyes. “You don’t look like much to me.”

Ariala manages a grin through the pain, though she feels her lips split at the action. “May not look much, but I still killed three of your men on my own—”

His eyes narrow and he throws her aside. His strength is far more than what it should be: she’s tossed nearly across the courtyard, straight into a massive stone statue that knocks the wind out of her and jars her shoulder. She bites back a groan and reaches for her shoulder, and looks up to see a cracked statue of Fen’Harel. Her impact had dislodged the snow from his eyes.

“Fucker,” she whispers. She tries to get up, using the base of the statue to support her, but a templar kicks her legs out from under her. Ariala snarls at him and tries to get up again, but he plants an armored foot on her back and shoves her down. The snow is hard-packed and sharp, and it _hurts_.

She’ll be damned if these fuckers get anything out of her, though.

“Knight-Captain,” one says. “The Elder One didn’t want her harmed.”

“Elder One didn’t want her _dead_ ,” the templar with a boot on her back corrects.

“Look at her. She’s half-dead already. Put her in the dungeons and inform the Elder One.”

“ _You_ don’t order _me_ —”

“Ah, but _I_ do,” says another voice, more muffled this time. “Do as he says. It’s a wise move.”

A pause, and then the Knight-Captain steps away from her. Ariala slowly sits up, and is not kicked down. She sees a dark-haired man wearing black fur robes, more luxurious and warm-looking than anything anyone else is wearing, grinning at her. When he sees her looking he gives her a little wave, fingers wiggling.

“Barris,” says the Knight-Captain. “Since you’re so concerned, you’re on guard duty until the Elder One sends someone to collect her.”

One templar, also in full plate, steps forward. He picks her up from the snow, more gently than she’d expected, his hands sliding under her knees and around her back. The metal freezes her skin, but she doesn’t make a sound. He carries her to a staircase hidden behind the crumbling Fen’Harel statue and to the dungeons.

Half the cells have red lyrium growing out from the stone. The other half are full of corpses impaled on red lyrium, and the sight of it makes her stomach turn. She thinks of Fiona, still alive but unmoving, resigned and helpless to her fate. Solas, so matter-of-fact about his inevitable end. _I am dying, but no matter._

There is one cell where the red lyrium infection seems smaller than the rest. This is the cell Barris puts her in, when she’d expected to join the corpses. He doesn’t search her for daggers or weapons, only locks the door and stands at attention.

Ariala swallows, looking at the red lyrium. It’s the only source of heat here, but if she gets too close… an impossible choice, choosing between cold or blight.

She chooses cold. She sits in the corner furthest from the red lyrium, trying not to look at it. There are no whispers like there had been in Sahrnia, but it’s disturbing nonetheless. More disturbing is Barris’s perfect stillness, like a statue.

“What’s your name?” she asks.

“Delrin Barris, Your Worship,” he replies. Her eyebrows rise at the title, and the respect in his voice. Where has she heard that name before? She can’t remember. She tries to think, but then Barris moves, his head turning. “You should try to get some rest. It’ll only get worse from here on out.”

Ariala follows his advice. Her dreams are either darkness punctured with a thousand lyrium-strangled whispers, or dreams of red lyrium growing in her blood and swallowing her from the inside-out, turning her into a behemoth that her friends have no choice but to cut down. In those dreams, she always wakes up after she sees the horror on Solas’s face.

His expression, no matter how imagined, sticks with her in the silent hours afterward.

— ✦ —

She doesn’t dream at all, in the Basin. Not since her injury, at least. She drifts in and out of consciousness, hazy memories of the Lieutenant and Dorian rushing in and out, and Dorian telling someone to contact Skyhold for a healer, for Vivienne. Bull sitting beside her. Pain, and cold. Those moments are punctuated with darkness.

One night, the darkness melts away like winter’s thaw, and she opens her eyes to an empty hut and soft golden lights in the night outside. 

It is a dream. It must be a dream, because Solas is sitting beside her on her bed. It’s not her bed at Skyhold—somewhere else, then. Some painless place her mind created for the both of them.

Seeing him is a draught of cool water in the desert. It returns color to her gray world. Her whole self and soul relaxes, and the ache of missing him is not so tender or bruised. 

Ariala huffs a soft laugh. “Hi there, sleepyhead,” she whispers.

Solas smiles at her. Gentle. A little sad. But then, he’s always a little sad.

She reaches up and he catches her hand, his skin much warmer than she’d expected. Now that she notices, she can also feel his heat where their bodies meet—hip to hip, separated by the blanket that covers her.

“You are cold,” he murmurs. 

Ariala hums in agreement, watching him. “I’ve never liked winter,” she tells him.

“I know,” he says. Simply, matter-of-fact. It shouldn’t hurt, but somehow, it does.

He intertwines their fingers and reaches down with his free hand, fingers brushing over the tattooed branches on her cheek. His hand drifts up to the bandages wrapped heavily over her temple, and he starts to undo them.

“Don’t,” she whispers. He pauses, looks down at her. Ariala frowns, trying to think through the fog. “They said I would die. I think. I heard them.”

“I will not let you die,” he tells her, turning her hand so he can press a kiss to the center of her palm. “I swear it, my heart.”

“You’re not here,” she whispers back, like a secret meant for the two of them alone. She laughs again, even though it makes her head hurt. “You left.”

Solas says nothing to that. The bandages he peels from her head are sticky with blood, old and new alike. The air is cold against her head wound. He inhales at the sight of it—slow and steady. If he is alarmed or disgusted, he doesn’t show it. Solas had never been one to blanch at blood or misery, not in life and not in dreams.

“Got me good,” she laughs. “I was frozen alive. Like what you did to the templars in the Emprise. Thought I’d get shattered like them, too.”

Solas looks down at her. “But you were not.”

She’s glad he’s humoring her. He touches her head wound, and she flinches. He whispers an apology, and then his warm fingers are warmer than before, glowing pale green. Her bloody-handed healer.

“The first Inquisitor was an elf. Dalish. Not—not _my_ Dalish, but from the old kingdom. Before the Marches.”

“Oh?”

“He had a Dreamer love. Telana. Isn’t it a pretty name?”

“It is.” He glances down at her face, but his attention is mostly on her wound. His right hand is still clasped in her left, warm and anchoring. She’s tired again, which doesn’t make much sense, but then again her dreams often don’t make sense to begin with. She’d once dreamed she was a varghest who could turn into a snowfleur and had to hide that secret from her pack, so.

“He went to fight a dragon or something, never came back. She spent the rest of her life dreaming in the Fade, trying to reach him.” Ariala sighs. “It’s… really sad, now that I think about it. But you would have _loved_ the island she went to. So many spirits, just everywhere.”

“Oh?”

Ariala nods, falling silent. Her head is heavy, and her eyelids are fluttering, but she doesn’t want this dream to end. She doesn’t want to wake up and find him gone again. His left hand finally pulls back from her head, and she sees blood on his fingertips. It doesn’t bother her, though. She’s not one to blanch at blood or misery, either, not after what she’s been through.

“You know,” she whispers, “they remind me of us, a little.”

Solas says nothing, watching her. The glow on his hand finally fades, and they are left in the candlelight.

“Mostly because of the Inquisitor-and-Dreamer-love thing, probably. I think I’d be Telana, just because… well.” She laughs, a little self-conscious. “I dream of you so often. Like now.”

His next words are spoken softly. “Would you prefer not to?”

The sorrow in his voice catches her by surprise. He looks like he is expecting an answer and has already accepted it. He looks like Rainier at the gallows.

“No,” she says, simply. “I’d miss you too much.”

His expression crumples at that, just a little. Oh, he looks exhausted. Exhausted and misery-stricken. His lips tremble, and instead of saying anything, he lowers his head to kiss the center of her palm again. His kiss lingers, fingers curled over her knuckles, holding her hand to his mouth.

_Oh, Solas. My poor heart._

“In any case,” he says finally, lowering their hands to her lap. “Perhaps I am Telana, and you Ameridan. _You_ are the famous dragonslayer, after all, not I.”

Ariala smiles, suddenly bashful. “What, you spend your nights dreaming about me?”

“More often than you think.” The playfulness is still there in his voice, but the exhaustion is there, too. So is the regret. It brings her back down, reminds her of how he had looked on the mountain, with the shattered orb she had destroyed at his feet. _What we had was real._

The air is warmer than it has been in a long time. She wants to sink into it, to sleep, to rest. She hasn’t rested in so long, she hardly knows what it means anymore.

“You can come home, you know,” she whispers. 

“I cannot.”

“You can.”

His mouth twists down, and he looks at their joined hands. “No, vhenan,” he says, soft and remorseful. “I cannot.”

He pulls away, and she knows better than to reach for him now. She has before, in her other dreams, but that just made him leave all the quicker. Instead she looks at the little corded necklace he had pressed into in her hand. It’s a simple silver amulet, engraved with a glowing blue rune, but it looks familiar, somehow.

When she looks up, Solas is gone. She closes her eyes and turns over and lets her dreams take her elsewhere for the night.

— ✦ —

Time has no meaning in her jail cell. She doesn’t eat any food unless Barris is the one to give it to her, though she knows that’s foolish—he’s a templar, as bad as any of the others. Barris says nothing, so all that she does is walk and try to keep herself warm without getting too close to the lyrium.

The song is louder, now. Clearer. Almost pretty, in its own way, and she might be tempted to listen to it if she wasn’t fucking terrified of it. Her nightmares about Redcliffe had mostly dissipated after some time in Skyhold, but they had come back in full force after a night spent beside red lyrium.

The motony is finally broken when she hears a door screech open, frozen metal screaming in protest. She winces at the noise, almost covers her ears. A troop of templars emerges a few minutes later—the prison must be larger than she’d thought—with one of them carrying a torch. She counts four. Three knights, one stalker. The stalker’s jagged lyrium arms glow a sickly burgundy in the dark, a deeper color than she’s used to seeing, and the only clothing he wears is a ragged pair of trousers. She can feel the heat of him from across the cell.

“The Inquisitor is to come with us for transport,” the torch-bearer says. Barris looks at her.

“I thought Samson would come here personally,” he says, and his voice is even worse than before, half-garbled. She barely understands him.

“Change of plans. Open the door.”

Barris’s hand flexes, and his knuckles make sound like breaking glass, or crystal. It’s nauseating. Ariala presses herself close to the wall, reaching out to her last dagger. She won’t let them take her without a fight, and she’s not half-frozen this time.

Barris opens the door, and when the leader strides through, she tenses, ready to strike. Before she can, though, Barris unsheathes the leader’s sword and drives it through the stalker’s chest. Ariala takes her cue and strikes, launching herself into the leader and slamming him into the ground. She pushes back his helmet just enough to expose his throat, then slits it, uncaring about the blood that runs over her hands.

She’ll have bruises from the plate later. She gets up anyway, pulling her dagger loose to find Barris fighting both remaining templars. With her help, the two are dispatched quickly, and they are soon the only ones left standing, bloody and injured and watching each other in tense silence.

Finally, Ariala croaks, “Why?”

Barris sheaths his sword. She relaxes at once, lowering her dagger but not quite dropping her guard. Barris looks her over, and says, “I have let this continue too long. It must be stopped. Please, Inquisitor. Follow.”

It almost seems like talking hurts him, somehow. But she nods, and goes after him, checking over her shoulder for another patrol whenever she hears the slightest movement. 

There’s a whole network of underground tunnels in the Suledin Keep, though she’s not sure why. She and Barris pass several tunnels that lead only to dead ends, or broken mosaics. He takes her to a room that’s been converted into an armory, cluttered with so much stuff she hardly knows where to start. But Barris knows, and after several minutes of picking his way around, returns to give her a recruit’s bow.

She looks it over, testing its weight and balance. It’s a little heavy, very solid, not broken in at all. The quiver is full of arrows—real arrows, sure, but designed for archery practice, not piercing through templar armor. 

She misses her own bow already, left splintered in the snow.

“Barris,” she starts, hesitantly, “we know how to destroy the lyrium. We can… try to cleanse you.”

She doesn’t know if it would even work—they’ve only destroyed deposits in the ground, not in people. But she won’t leave his kindness unpaid.

“I… won’t say no,” he says, after a pause. “But it might be too late.”

She nods, and they get going again. He takes her up a flight of steps, then two, and her unused muscles ache in protest. As they get closer to the surface, she pauses, listening to the commotion outside. Shouts, and cries of dying men. Swords. The templars are fighting something outside.

Wait—they’re _fighting_. 

_Solas_ , she thinks at once, heart pounding. 

Barris hears it, too, tensing at once. His lyrium infection is the only source of light—a dim, dull red that only stretches on for a few feet. But it’s enough light for her to look around and realize there aren’t any doors nearby, only blank stone walls and a single Elven mosaic for decoration, its luster lost to time. So where is the noise coming from—?

Barris looks at her, unsheathing his sword. “Wait for me,” he tells her, and this close she can see his eyes beneath his vizor, see the haze that crackles in little scarlet lightning bolts in the air around them. _I am dying, but no matter_. “I will see what is happening.”

He goes down the hall, leaving her in the dark, and after a moment Ariala swallows, tugging off one of her gloves. The Anchor shines a bright emerald in the dark, and she has to look away for a moment before it settles down. 

She spends several minutes pacing in that little hall, trying to keep herself warm while listening to the fighting—outside? above her?—and waiting for Barris. When nothing happens, she finally sets her bow on the ground and settles against the mosaic.

She doesn’t hear Solas’s voice in the fighting, and she isn’t sure if that’s good or bad. Finally, she _does_ hear footsteps, and the adrenaline kicks in again, setting her heart to racing. She grabs her bow with her right hand, placing the left on the mosaic for support as she gets to her feet—

And the mosaic crumbles under her touch, the Anchor flashing a bright green. She topples straight over, right onto the rubble that had formed the base of the wall, landing on her stomach and hip. Sputtering and panicked, she tries to push herself to her feet, only to look up and see a figure standing right in front of her. 

She yelps despite herself, scrambling back. _“What the—”_

“Hello!” says Cole, cheerfully. Ariala watches him for a moment, her heart _hammering_ , and then she sags, staring up at the ceiling.

— ✦ —

The morning after she dreams of Solas, she wakes feeling a thousand times better. She can sit up without her head hurting; the light doesn’t trigger an immediate migraine. She can move all her fingers, and her toes. It’s quiet in the hut, and for a moment it’s disorientingly familiar before she realizes it’s one of the treehouses the Inquisition has built in the Frostback Basin. Someone had put up an old cape as a makeshift curtain, but it’s been pushed aside, letting in the cool autumn air.

“The Avaar says the air feels colder than it should,” someone says outside. “We’re due for an early winter, apparently.”

“Oh, great,” another replies. “Caravan with the healer’s already stuck in the Frostback passages and we haven’t even had the winter snows. Inquisitor might be dead by that time, skull cracked like an egg like hers is.”

“It isn’t _that_ bad—”

“Oh yes it is! Saw it myself when Bull carried her—”

Bull comes in then, ducking under the doorframe and carefully shutting the door behind him. A tray of breakfast rations are in his hands. His entrance pulls her attention away from the window. He follows her gaze, and his eye narrows as he hears the guards gossiping about her apparent deathbed status. He reaches over her head effortlessly and draws the cape back over the window.

“Hey, boss,” he says. “You _really_ shouldn’t be out of bed—”

He stops, looking at her for the first time.

“What?”

“Your head,” he says. She reaches up to touch her temple. 

“I guess it wasn’t as bad as they say,” she says. Bull looks dubious, reaching out and touching her temple as well. He turns her head, inspecting for something, she’s not sure what. His fingers are warm and she feels herself blush, anyway.

“It was,” he says, slowly, setting down breakfast on the bed. “If you hadn’t been wearing a helmet you would’ve died. We had to freeze and break that fucker into pieces to get it off of you. And now… _huh_.”

He turns around and opens the door. “Hey, you,” he barks to one of the guards outside, who immediately snaps to attention. “Get Dorian. And Farrow.”

“Farrow’s gone out on patrol, sir!”

“When?”

“Several… hours ago? Before dawn.”

Bull goes still in a way he only gets when he’s pissed off. “Wasn’t Farrow supposed to be watching the Inquisitor overnight? Why did he fuck off _hours ago?”_

“He said you came in to take over his shift, sir.”

Bull growls. “Get Dorian. _Now_.”

The scout runs off. Bull shuts the door, turning to face her again. Ariala had taken the tray back to her bed and was carefully eating her pieces of toast. At least she had an appetite this morning. That was good, right?

“Boss,” he starts, once the scout is gone. “Anyone come in here last night?”

“I wouldn’t know,” she says. “I was out cold. Worried about an assassin?”

“Hm.” He gives her another appraising look, his expression smoothing over into something unreadable. “Guess not, since you’re not dead.” He comes over, sitting down across from her, the bed creaking in protest. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Ariala replies. “Same as usual.”

“That’s good.” He nods, then takes a piece of toast. “Well. That’s fine. Farrow ain’t one of mine, so I’ll have to tell Harding to chew his ass out instead. Ditching his overnight watch to go on patrol.” He grumbles. “ _Asshole._ ”

The door bursts open, and they both react on instinct. Ariala looks for the closest weapon, and Bull reaches for the dirk on his hip. But it’s just Dorian, hair windswept and eyes wide, and for a long moment they all just stare at each other.

And then Dorian heaves a massive sigh of relief, his worry shifting to a glare he turns on Bull. “What were you thinking, telling me to come here _at once_ without any other context?” he scolds, shutting the door and keeping out the cold. Ariala shivers nonetheless. “I thought she had _died_ , you thoughtless—”

He smoothes down his hair, spots her, and stops. “Uh,” he says.

“So it wasn’t you,” Bull says.

“ _No_ , it wasn’t me, I sent a raven for Vivienne, _she’s_ the healer now that—” he stops again, holding himself back. “Do we… have healers here? Mages?”

“Okay, so,” Ariala interrupts. “I’m guessing I was looking really bad, just, like. Based off of your reactions. Was my head crushed in or something?”

“Multiple skull fractures,” Bull says. “You took a warhammer to the face, boss. You’ve been out for a few days, only awake a few hours of ‘em. And now you’re all patched up.”

Ariala looks over to Dorian, who is looking at her end table with a strange look on his face. “What is it?” she asks. After a moment, he crosses the room, picking up a corded necklace. It takes her a moment to recognize it—a master-enchanted cold resistance amulet.

“This is,” he says. His brow furrows. “Ah… didn’t you… didn’t you give this to Solas? In the Emprise?”

Ariala takes it, running the cool amulet between her fingers, and her head snaps up. She rolls out of the bed, almost tripping on the sheets she pulls to the floor in her haste, and rushes out of the hut. A flock of brightly-colored birds take wing, but she pays them no attention. She looks wildly out at the forest below, but there is nothing.

Nothing.

He’s gone.

But how had he known—

“Amica,” Dorian calls, standing beside her. He has a knowing look on his face that makes her stomach twist, but he still looks over the forest beside her. After a moment, he says, “Is everything all right?”

She can’t answer. She clutches the cold resistance amulet to her chest and returns to her sickroom in silence.

— ✦ —

 _“Cole?”_ Ariala asks, incredulous, once her heart attack has passed.

Cole waves at her, his hat hiding his face in the dark. “They are very worried for you,” he says, reaching out to help her back to her feet. “But I can take you to them.”

Ariala winces as a dull, throbbing pain begins to spread up her side. Yep. That would bruise. “Them? The Inquisition?”

“Yes.”

She swallows. “And Solas?”

“Fighting very hard. Your name is shards of ice in his mouth, cutting, bleeding. He is very afraid.”

She nods, leaning against the wall. Cole takes her arm and drapes it over his shoulder; his weight is much more solid than she’d thought. Sometimes she’d thought he was reed-thin, ready to buckle under the slightest breeze, but he has no problem helping her walk up the stairs.

Halfway up, she realizes: “We left Barris behind.”

“I will find him, after,” Cole assures her. “His hurt is very loud.”

She believes him. She nods, wincing as another throb of pain radiates up her side. The fighting has quieted above her, a little bit, as the staircase leads to another dark tunnel. Cole seems to know where to go, though, and says nothing to her as they walk past cobwebbed archways and dead-end corridors.

Finally, Cole finds a door, and Ariala shivers at the winter air leaking in through the cracks. The draft is noticeable, even from their few feet away. She’s not looking forward to going outside again.

She and Cole step outside into crisp winter air; the too-bright sunlight hurts her eyes. She readjusts her grip on her bow, squinting until they reach a shaded walkway that overlooks the entire valley of the Emprise.

“Here,” Cole says, lifting her arm from his shoulder. “They will be here soon.”

Ariala nods, pulling away. “Go find Barris,” she says. “I’ll be okay here.”

Cole nods and returns to the tunnels, disappearing in the dark. Ariala looks—the walkway is above some type of courtyard, which probably would’ve been another garden in the summer. The fighting has quieted, now, hardly audible from her place above the valley.

What did Josephine once call Skyhold, when the first snows came? _Winter wonderland._

The peace is shattered when the courtyard doors are slammed open, and she starts, pulling back and pressing her back against the wall. Her hands are shaking from nerves and cold both as she reaches down and notches an arrow in her recruit’s bow. Her teeth are chattering and she can’t stop, her whole body shaking from the cold.

And then, Solas’s voice.

“The dungeons—we must first search the dungeons—”

The _relief_ of it, of hearing his voice and knowing she is, finally, safe…

Her eyes tear up, the only warmth she’s felt since leaving her tent to go walk into that trap, and she drops her bow, staggering out into the open. 

Bull and Solas are there, sunken in the snow up to their calves, and Bull is the first to notice her. He calls for Solas, sharply, and Solas looks up from the snow and sees her. His face is tight with fear and anxiety, and his expression slackens into sharp relief the moment he sees her.

“Solas,” she croaks, and her feet are moving before she even thinks of it. It’s instinct, running into his arms; he catches her, but the force of it makes him stagger backward. He catches his footing, and his arms wrap around her, so warm she shudders.

“Vhenan,” he says, his face pressed against her neck. She is too cold to reply, teeth chattering. She only tries to wrap her arms around his neck and pull him closer, tries to get some of his warmth to leech into her. After a moment, Solas pulls away and calls for Iron Bull.

“Yep. Got it. C’mere, Boss.”

She looks to Bull, and without another word he leans down and picks her up, hoisting her into his arms. Solas had been warm, but Iron Bull was _hot_ , the heat of him radiating through his shirt. Ariala burrows against him, and the thaw makes her shudder.

“Fuck. She’s freezing.” 

“We need to find Cassandra,” Solas says.

“C-Cass?” Ariala asks, shivering. “How—how long?”

“Three days,” Bull says. “Remember you told Harding to request more troops and supplies when we first got here? Cass got here this morning. Took charge of everything.”

“Oh,” she whispers, curling up tighter against Bull, trying to soak up as much of his heat as she can. “That’s good.” Her teeth chatter. “A templar—Delrin Barris, he helped me. We have to try to save him.” 

“Got it, Boss,” Bull says. “You’re safe now. We got you.”

She believes him.

— ✦ —

The Jaws of Hakkon have done something to the old Tevinter temple, entirely unrelated to the unmelting ice wall that had kept it inaccessible for Ages. Inside, the floors are dusted with snow, and those damned ice wards are floating in the air. Snow is falling _inside_ the halls, and whenever she gets too close one of the Hakkonite wards hits her with a flare of cold magic. She or Dorian shoot them down, usually, but it’s too much. The Hakkonites don’t even seem to _notice_ the cold.

“Sing the song of Savage Hakkon,” booms the Hakkonite leader, his voice echoing through the empty annals of the temple. Their magic is building, turning snowfall into blizzard. The only thing that seems to keep them at bay are the fires.

She and her party crests the staircase, and below—a massive purple and white dragon, suspended in midair. Green magic, reminiscent of the rift that had suspended Telana’s body in time on the island.

 _Ameridan_.

They’re almost there. She can see a brazier—unlit, but surrounded by Hakkonites.

A Hakkonite spellcaster slams his staff into the ground, and ice begins to crawl up her legs, rooting her to the spot. Ariala stiffens, panic crawling hot and terrible up her throat, terror seizing her chest. _No, no, no, not again—_

The amulet of cold resistance hums on her chest, and the ice starts to thaw. Ariala kicks her way out of the ice, stumbling in her haste to free herself. In a moment she’s recovered, and shot an arrow into the chest of the very surprised spellcaster. Cole is there a moment later, daggers flashing, and the spellcaster goes down.

“Dorian!” she shouts. He’s helping Bull with a bruiser, but his head snaps toward her at the sound of her voice. “The brazier!” 

Dorian slams his staff into the ground, fire burning through the air, cutting through the blizzard. The brazier flares, sparks spiraling, and Ariala feels the heat on her face.

Until a shadow emerges from the icy darkness, and a Hakkonite spy leaps onto her back, arm wrapping around her throat. She hauls Ariala back, away from the warmth of the fire, back into the magical storm the cult had summoned. A ward hits her with a burst of cold, and Ariala gasps for air, her breath misting. She fumbles for the dagger at her waist, but her hands are frozen, fingers too stiff to move well.

It’s cold. There is steel at her throat and snow in her eyes, and—and—

She won’t die like this.

With all of her energy, she throws her shoulder forward and kicks out the spy’s ankle. The Hakkonite is tossed over her shoulder, hitting the frozen stone floor with a grunt and a _crack_ that sounds like ice splitting. Ariala fumbles for the Hakkonite’s discarded dagger and buries it in her chest.

The blizzard whips her hair, and she realizes she’s farther away from the brazier than she’d thought. She stands up, bracing her arm over her face against the wind.

_“BEGS OF HAKKON, BRING HIS BODY BLOODY-BLESSING, COLD AND PAIN—”_

She’s been here before. Haven, wind whipping around her, fingers frozen stiff, bloody and sore—stalking through Suledin Keep’s underground tunnels with Barris—

The necklace is warm against her chest, gives her enough strength to stumble toward the light. Haven’s lights? No. No, the brazier, with Dorian.

Someone grabs her, pulls her close. She’s hauled into the circle of warmth and shudders at the suddenness of it, the fear and cold melting away at once. Dorian hands her a healing potion, and she looks up at Bull, who squeezes her shoulder and pulls away. 

“C’mon, Ari,” Bull grunts. “Not over yet.”

— ✦ —

It takes a few hours after the fighting to find somewhere quiet and secluded. Cassandra is the one who brings her there, carrying a mountain of blankets in her arms. “It is nothing fancy,” she starts.

“I don’t need fancy,” Ariala assures her, stepping inside. “I just need the biggest bathtub in the fortress.”

Cassandra manages half a laugh, which is better than expected, considering everything. “That we did manage to accomplish,” she says, dryly, “given it was your only criteria.” Once Ariala is inside, Cassandra lingers outside the door. “I will send someone to start the bath.”

“Cass,” Ariala says, before she goes. Cassandra turns back to her, and she pulls her into a hug. It’s awkward, with the armor between them, but Cassandra’s gloved hands are comforting in their weight around her. Ariala closes her eyes. “Thank you for leading the charge, when you got here.”

Cassandra nods. “I am glad that you are safe, my friend.”

Cassandra leaves, and Ariala is left alone in her room. She gets a fire started, then sits in front of it, warming her extremities first. She undoes her armor, her body aching after three days of wearing Dalish chain, and reaches under her shirt to press her warmed hands to her cool stomach. 

She is somewhat warmed by the time there’s a knock on the door. “Come in,” she calls, and after a moment the door opens. She looks over her shoulder and sees Solas, carrying a tray. Her whole self softens at seeing him.

“Hey, you,” she says, and he half-smiles.

“I brought you some tea,” he says, walking over to her. He sets the tray down, then looks to the giant bathtub across the room. He leaves her for a moment, and as he summons water, he says, “It is elfroot. Not pleasant to drink, but it should help you recover your strength. I brought water as well, to wash the taste down.”

Ariala holds her nose and forces herself to drink all of it. She is left grimacing and vaguely nauseous. She guzzles all of the water, but the vague earthy taste of elfroot is left on her tongue. “Ew,” she mutters.

“The bath is ready.”

He turns away as she strips and gets into the bath. The water is pleasantly warm, but not hot enough. Once she’s settled, she calls his name, leaning against the rim of the tub. He settles with his back to her, and the sigh he lets out is felt in the deepest, most exhausted part of her.

“Are you all right?” she asks, lowering one wet hand to drape over his collar. Solas clasps her forearm, turning toward her. She presses her forehead to his, and he sighs, his body unwinding slowly.

“I am fine,” he says, eyes closed. “My concern was for you.”

Her heart warms at that. She cups his cheek and kisses him, half-smiling when his hand skims over her arm to cup her elbow. He lifts himself up, just a little, just enough for a better angle. When they part, he is the one to press his forehead against hers.

She can feel his trembling.

“You’re shaking,” she whispers to him. He nods, eyes still closed, and takes a deep breath. 

“You are well?” he asks, his voice hushed. “You are—you are not—they did not—”

“They did nothing. I’m safe. I’m here with you.” She kisses his forehead, and his hand tightens around her elbow. After a moment, he reaches down, heating the water with a simple flick of his fingers. Steam curls up into the air, and sweat starts to bead along her temple. She sighs, sagging against him, resting her head on his shoulder. He kisses her forehead, reaching up to stroke her hair, uncaring of how unkempt it is.

“Ar lath ma,” he tells her.

She believes him. She will know him, one day, as the silver-tongued liar he is; she will doubt his every word. But even in the end, she will never doubt his love.

— ✦ —

“And Telana?” Ameridan asks. “Do… do the records say what became of her?”

_Vhenan, I’m dreaming…_

“She returned to the island,” she tells him. The heaviness in her soul is an old friend. “She died trying to reach you in dreams.”

He looks down, eyes squeezing shut, hands flexing around his staff as his expression trembles. He takes a long breath, and whispers, “I asked her not to. She was a great hunter, and the love of my life, but…”

_You can come home._

_No, I cannot._

“I understand, _hahren_ ,” she says. That makes Ameridan look up. The weariness on his face is carried on her shoulders. It should be exciting, meeting the first Inquisitor, knowing he is one of her People—but she feels nothing. She has felt nothing for a long time. 

She looks to the dragon suspended above him, its jaws wide and ready to snap closed around its prey. Winter in flesh.

All she can think of is the fight ahead, and how hard it will be. All she can think of is the cold.

“I never wanted this job,” he tells her. “Hunting demons was so much easier than politics. But Drakon asked me to lead, to show a united front. I was needed… as I suspect you were needed.”

Ariala swallows, acutely aware of her companions behind her. In Elvhen, she says, “I didn’t want this. They’ve taken everything from me, teacher. I’m _tired_.”

Ameridan has a knowing look on his face. It’s comforting, despite everything, despite knowing his magic is fading and he will soon be dead and she will again be alone. “I know, da’len. But take moments of happiness where you find them, if you can,” he advises. “The world will take the rest.”

She wants to laugh, but can’t. Instead, she shrugs. The jawbone necklace is heavy under her armor. “It already has.”

“I understand,” he says, and he is already looking weaker, thinner. Like time is rushing back to him, sapping his strength. He bows his head.

 _Don’t go,_ she wants to say. _Stay. Live. I want to hear about our People. I want to hear your stories._

But the passage of years can only be delayed, not ignored. 

Ameridan dies, and she is again cold and alone in the world. The Tevinter stronghold shakes as Hakkon Wintersbreath crashes through the ceiling, taking to the skies once more. Ariala watches in numb silence as it begins to snow.

Her hardest season, come again.


End file.
